Restricting nuclear power has little effect on the cost of climate policies

ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2012) — By applying a global energy-economy computer simulation that fully captures the competition between alternative power supply technologies, a team of scientists analyzed trade-offs between nuclear and climate policies. Strong greenhouse-gas emissions reduction to mitigate global warming shows to have much larger impact on economics than nuclear policy, according to the study. Incremental costs due to policy options restricting the use of nuclear power do not significantly increase the cost of even stringent greenhouse-gas emissions reductions.

"Questions have been raised if restricting nuclear energy -- an option considered by some countries after the accident in Fukushima, Japan -- combined with climate policies might get extremely expensive. Our study is a first assessment of the consequences of a broad range of combinations of climate and nuclear policies," lead author Nico Bauer says. Restrictions on nuclear power could be political decisions, but also regulations imposed by safety authorities. Power generation capacities would have to be replaced, but fossil fuels would become costly due to a price on CO2 emissions, this in sum is the main concern.

"However, in case of restricted use of nuclear power, the flexibility of allocating a long-term carbon budget over time enables higher near-term emissions due to increased power generation of natural gas," Bauer says. Along with demand reductions and efficiency improvements, these provisions could help fill the gap on electricity. The price of natural gas is projected to decrease due to demand reductions, according to the study. Decommissioning existing plants will also avoid refurbishment costs for expanding lifetimes of old nuclear power plants.

As a result, early retirement of nuclear power plants would lead to cumulative global gross domestic product losses (GDP) that amount to about 10 percent of climate policy costs. If no new nuclear capacities are allowed, the costs would amount to 20 percent.

For their study, the scientists looked into different nuclear power policies. These cover a range of scenarios from "Renaissance," with a full utilization of existing power plants, a possible refurbishment for a lifetime expansion and investments in new nuclear power capacities, to "Full exit," with a decommissioning of existing power plants and no new investments. They contrasted each scenario with climate policies implemented via an inter-temporal global carbon budget which puts a price on carbon emissions. For the budget, the cumulative CO2 emissions from the global energy sector were limited to 300 gigatons of carbon from 2005 until the end of the century. This represents a climate mitigation policy consistent with the target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

"A surprising result of our study is the rather little difference between a 'Renaissance' or a 'Full exit' of nuclear power in combination with a carbon budget when it comes to GDP losses," Bauer says. While the 'no policy case' with a nuclear phase-out and no carbon budget has only negligible effect on global GDP, the imposition of a carbon budget with no restrictions on nuclear policy implies a reduction of GDP that reaches 2.1 percent in 2050. The additional phase-out of nuclear power increases this loss by about 0.2 percent in 2050 and hence has only little additional impact on the economy, because the contribution of nuclear power to the electricity generation can be substituted relatively easy by alternative technology options, including the earlier deployment of renewables.

Nuclear energy like a fantastic vaccine?

In the 1950s, “too cheap to meter” was the tag line for then-nascent atomic energy. That promise, which Bill Gates now calls a “fantastic vaccine,” has thus far been more of an intractable virus.

Last week Mr. Gates revived the “nuclear is cheap” message to promote his TerraPower nuke startup venture. He also came off decidedly pessimistic about the world’s prospects for combating climate change.
The nuclear industry has long touted “cheap” alongside “clean” in its bid against renewable energy to supply electricity to a power-hungry world. It has also argued loudly against subsidies for renewables, and claimed that nuclear is the only way to slow global warming.

Gates has joined that chorus, stating that he’s skeptical that the world can dramatically cut greenhouse-gas emissions in less than 75 years, and suggesting that wind and solar subsidies should be conditional upon commercializing energy storage technologies first.

To make the “cheap and clean” argument, you have to ignore some significant externalities. A big problem with “cheap” nuclear power has been the cost — construction budget overruns, bailouts, storing spent rods, site clean-up, and human lives. The caveat with “clean” (low-carbon) nuclear power is its multigenerational legacy of radioactive waste.

The traveling wave reactor technology revealed in 2008 as the core of TerraPower’s development is a half-century-old breeder-reactor technology that could run on some of the waste stream from nuclear fuel production. A TWR has been computer-modeled, but never built.

If Gates and his TerraPower partner Nathan Myhrvold want to change the world with nuclear energy, they need to overcome several major issues, and quickly, before the widely imagined nuclear renaissance completely loses steam:

Developed nations, the ones the world is most comfortable with having radioactive materials, have for the most part stopped building nuclear power plants. Emerging nations, even if they can afford to experiment with this new technology, will need to handle the radioactive fuel and waste, including the eventual decommissioning of plants themselves. Convincing populations of a TWR plant’s safety will be a significant hurdle.

Even before Fukushima, John Rowe, chief executive of nuclear power heavyweight Exelon, said in a Politico interview that “except with massive subsidies, there’s really nothing one can do to make a whole lot of nuclear plants economic right now.” The company bought a major renewable energy firm and started moving into wind power.

Nuclear Power Going Down — More Facts (& VIDEO)

Piggy-backing on the news that Japan has just shut down its second-to-last nuclear reactor and that France still subsidies nuclear power to get it down to the price of consumer electricity, here are some rather interesting nuclear versus renewable facts (shared by a reader):

“… between 2004 and 2011, more nuclear-power capacity was decommissioned worldwide than was installed. Last year alone, the world installed 50 percent more new wind-power capacity (41.2 gigawatts) than all new nuclear capacity installed from 2002 to 2011 (27.3 GW). In terms of electricity production, the wind-power industry has installed the equivalent of 1.3 nuclear reactors per month over the past three years.” (emphasis added)

The European Commission projects that only 3% of all new power capacity installed from 2011 to 2020 will be from nuclear power, while it projects 71% will be from renewable energy sources.
Here are some more staggering facts (emphasis added):

In October 2011, former UK Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said that two-thirds of the budget for the government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, or €2.4bn a year, is spent on nuclear power. But that is a drop in the ocean compared to decommissioning costs. According to Huhne, “the provisions for nuclear decommissioning costs in total were £2m in 1970, £472m in 1980, £9.5bn in 1990, £22.5bn in 2000, and now, £53.7bn. When nuclear power was held up to the cold, hard light of the market, it proved to be uneconomic.”

Wind power has received a fraction of the financial support that nuclear energy has received – and yet wind can provide electricity at less than half the cost of new nuclear-power plants. According to the European Environment Agency, 80 percent of the total energy subsidies in the European Union is paid to fossil fuels and nuclear energy, while 19 percent goes to renewables.

Moreover, wind energy has zero fuel costs, minimal waste-disposal and decommissioning costs, and a tiny fraction of nuclear power’s risk to human health or the environment.

Nuclear Power Too Expensive, French Court Finds

The French Court of Auditors recently found that nuclear power, which France is a leader in, costs more than what electricity consumers in the country are charged.

Furthermore, the wind industry there has spoken up to point out that electricity from wind power is cheaper than from new nuclear.

Here’s more from Craig Morris of Renewables International:

The 446-page report, which is only available in French (PDF) and does not have an executive summary, was designed mainly to answer the question of whether “all costs are taken into account” in the pricing of nuclear power in France. The answer is no.

The study found that the cost of constructing a nuclear plant has risen from 1.07 million euros (adjusted for inflation as of 2010) per megawatt in 1978 at the Fessenheim plant on the border to Germany, which is the oldest nuclear reactor currently in operation in France, to 1.37 million euros per megawatt for the Civaux plant constructed in 2002, with the average cost of a megawatt of nuclear capacity for France’s current 58 reactors coming in at 1.25 million euros.

The nuclear industry must actually be looking back on 2002 nuclear costs with envy, though, as new costs due to new safety requirements enacted since the Fukushima disasters in Japan are bringing nuclear power costs to yet a higher level.

“The estimated costs for the second EPR plant currently under construction in Flamanville comes in at 3.7 million euros per megawatt; construction began in 2006 and was to be finished this year, but completion has been delayed until 2016, and costs have risen by more than 50 percent.” (emphasis added)

“Overall, the Court estimates that a megawatt-hour of nuclear power made in France costs around 49.5 euros. As French daily Figaro reported, the costs entailed for additional safety requirements in reaction to the disaster in Fukushima will probably increase that price by another 10 percent to around 54 euros. The paper also points out that the estimation of 49.5 euros is more than 10 euros greater than what the Champsaur Commission estimated a year before; based on that estimate, the price of power was set at 42 euros per megawatt-hour, roughly a sixth below the apparent actual cost estimated by the Court of Auditors.”

The European Wind Energy Association’s response? Using its cost calculator online, EWEA projects that nuclear will cost 102 euros per megawatt-hour by 2020, onshore wind only 58 euros, and offshore wind 75 euros. Perhaps France will one day find itself where Japan is, shutting down its last nuclear reactors.

Turning Nuclear Power into the Hydrogen Economy

The technology for a nuclear plant to also create hydrogen fuel has been around for decades, according to IAEA member Ibrahim Khamis, Ph.D., who spoke at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) on Sunday, and could help us into the long-heralded “hydrogen economy”.

The term “hydrogen economy” was first coined back in 1970 by former professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M University John Bockris during a talk he gave in 1970 at General Motors Technical Center. In short, it refers to an era where gasoline, diesel, and other fossil fuels are laid by the wayside and hydrogen powers our world.

Steam from Philippsburg nuclear power plant

Spin up to 2012, and according to Khamis, we have the technology to convert the steam created at nuclear power plants into hydrogen using a process termed electrolysis.

“There is rapidly growing interest around the world in hydrogen production using nuclear power plants as heat sources,” Khamis said. “Hydrogen production using nuclear energy could reduce dependence on oil for fueling motor vehicles and the use of coal for generating electricity. In doing so, hydrogen could have a beneficial impact on global warming, since burning hydrogen releases only water vapor and no carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. There is a dramatic reduction in pollution.”

Khamis said scientists and economists at IAEA and elsewhere are working intensively to determine how current nuclear power reactors — 435 are operational worldwide — and future nuclear power reactors could be enlisted in hydrogen production.

Most current production of hydrogen comes from natural gas or coal and results in the production of carbon dioxide. However there are smaller scale electrolysis projects in use, a process which sends an electric current flowing through water, splitting the H2O molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, and is more efficient if the electric current is passed through steam.

Experts believe that existing nuclear power plants can be adapted using a low-temperature electrolysis which can take advantage of low electricity prices during the plant’s off-peak hours to produce hydrogen. For plants being designed and in construction, a more efficient, high-temperature electrolysis process can be coupled with thermochemical processes, and is currently under research and development.

“Nuclear hydrogen from electrolysis of water or steam is a reality now, yet the economics need to be improved,” said Khamis.

True, economically viable possibility down the road? Or pipe dream?

Nuclear cemetery

As in any process of obtaining energy, it is necessary to use materials that provide a physical and chemical reaction whose energy is then captured by various technologies to generate electricity, and in the case of the Nuclear reactors, generates a large amount of waste that are obviously harmful if that does not properly kept.

Those considered as radioactive waste are usually a group of radioisotopes, elements whose main characteristic is to emit ionizing radiation, that can naturally cause damage to human health and the environment, taking different types and levels of radiation which vary in the periods:

Low activity waste:They are generated by hospitals and industry in general, including also the processing of Nuclear fuel, containing small amounts of radiation of short duration (with a period of 30 years semi-desintegración)Middle activity waste: even though its name suggests not, these wastes contain higher amounts of radioactivity, in some cases requiring a Special protection for storageincluded in this group to the mud, resins and chemicals used in the Nuclear Reactor, so much so as contaminated materials from decommissioning. While having a same period of semi-desintegración of low activity, required to be solidified in concrete or tarWaste of high activity: are those from the operation of the Nuclear reactors, containing by-products of Nuclear fission and the Transuranium elements that are generated at the core of it, being highly radioactive and even possessing high temperature directly.

These residues are derived from 95% of the total radioactivity produced in the process of Nuclear electricity, widely exceeding 30 years for his semi-desintegración.
Among these, stands out the plutonium 240, with 6,600 years; and neptunium 237, with a half-life of 2.130.000 years

As they must assume, each group of nuclear waste will require storage identified for disposal, so tend to locate in the colloquially known as Nuclear cemeteries, which include sites which are carefully kept these materials, previously conditioned according to the type of waste.

Warehouses of low activity: are located on the surface or very shallow, being mainly chosen the Minas Abandonadas, with various barriers and using geologically stable and impervious areas, with all possible security measures.Temporary warehouse: waste of High activity, being used for treatment or recycling of the same, or to achieve their correct isolation, prior to disposal, but they also tend to host materials for less than 100 years.Geological storage: also known as Deep geological storage (AGP) is used to store waste of high activity and deadlines over a thousand years, although they are still in development because of its complexity.Storage submarine: instead of storing beneath the Earth, in this case exploits the Ocean floor, more precisely in the oceanic trenches, where discharges of these materials are carried out from the year 1950.

UK & France in major nuclear reactor deal

UK Prime Minister Cameron deals directly with French President Sarkozy
EDF, Rolls Royce, and Areva will benefit

Two French nuclear giants, EDF and Areva, and Rolls-Royce, the flagship nuclear firm in the UK, are signing deals worth {l}500 million ($791 million) to build new nuclear reactors in the UK. (EDF press release)

The deals are focused on the first new build at Hinkley Point in the UK. EDF has referenced the 1600 MW Areva EPR reactor design for that site.

The UK government said in a statement the deal will create 1500 new jobs. The statement went on to point out the agreement advances greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.

The British prime minister, David Cameron, who is in Paris to meet the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to seal the deal, said the agreements were “just the beginning” of investment the government says could be worth £60 billion and create 30,000 jobs.

The government said the joint declaration to be signed today will signal “our shared commitment to the future of civil nuclear power, setting out a shared long term vision of safe, secure, sustainable and affordable energy, that supports growth and helps to deliver our emission reductions targets”.

The two governments will work together with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “to strengthen international capability to react to nuclear emergencies and establish a joint framework for cooperation and exchanging good practice on civil nuclear security”.

The announcement comes just eight months after the Fukushima nuclear reactor crisis. It demonstrates the commitment of the two nations to use nuclear energy to address their needs for electricity. The UK government has identified eight sites for new reactors. (see table below)

Deal highlights

NucNet reports that highlights of the deal include;

• A £100 million contract with a construction consortium to prepare the Hinkley Point nuclear site in Somerset for construction of two European Pressurised Water Reactors (EPRs).

• A £15 million training campus at Bridgewater in Somerset to train the next generation of nuclear workers.

• A deal with Rolls Royce for key components that could be worth potentially up to £400 million. Rolls Royce plans to build a purpose-built factory in Rotherham, northern England, which is also the site of the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, which helps firms become certified nuclear suppliers.

A Rolls Royce spokesman said the hope is that the factory will become “some sort of springboard” for nuclear export orders in future.

A key isue facing EDF and the other firms planning to build nuclear power plants in the UK is that they are merchants. They cannot recover construction costs until the plants enter revenue service.

Challenges ahead

A nuclear energy expert with experience in the UK told this blog the current UK government was elected with a strong pledge to not subsidize new nuclear.

In summary the expert said the UK government has developed a set of incentives as a part of a wider Electricity Market Reform. In August 2011, the basic principles of the reforms were approved, with carbon floor prices, low-carbon, base load generation, etc.

But the second important stage, setting carbon prices, has not taken place. The government now says it will release that information in May 2012.

The delay adds a factor of uncertainty to the futue of the UK new build. Natural gas prices will rise over time so that may be less of a factor by the time the reactors come online by the end of this decade.

Scope of the UK new build

In November 2011 EDF Energy applied for consent from the UK’s Infrastructure Planning Commission to build and operate two new nuclear reactor units at Hinkley Point. The France-based utility plans to construct the two EPRs to the west of its existing Hinkley Point B nuclear plant, where there are two units in commercial operation.

All Is Not Quiet on the Nuclear Front

NY Times OP ED asks if nuclear power has a future?

An interesting question is posed by a guest opinion piece published in the New York Times on October 10. Stephanie Cooke, a respected nuclear industry analyst and book author, asks whether there is a future for nuclear energy in the post-Fukushima era.

Ms. Cooke, who is an editor at Energy Intelligence, a trade press agency, surprises a casual reader by starting off with a Halloween type scare tactic of saying the Fukushima crisis is a “fearful reminder” of what can go wrong.

Anyone who knows anything about probabilistic risk assessment knows that accidents are likely to happen again. There will be more natural disasters in the future that will significantly affect nuclear power plants. The earthquake in Virginia last August took Dominion’s North Anna station offline and the NRC has not indicated when or if it will allow a restart.

Much of the damage to F-D was caused by the tsunami because safety related infrastructure was on the seaward side of the plants and the seawall was inadequate. TEPCO was told years ago to build a higher seawall and ignored the advice. The downfall of TEPCO will be hubris not accidents.

Ms. Cooke notes that Germany, Switzerland, and Italy have all abandoned their nuclear energy programs because of the Fukushima accident. She leaves behind in this sweeping generalization important nuances that make the picture she’d like us to see less compelling and more complex.

For instance, the World Nuclear Association has labeled Chancellor Merkel’s move to renewables as “delusional.” Switzerland’s legislative body hedged its bets in voting to end nuclear energy at least two decades from now.

I have serious objections to Cooke’s views. I emailed them to her earlier this week. She has not responded with even an acknowledgement. I am writing this blog post without the benefit of her input and instead rely on the OP ED as published for my comments.

As it turns out Ms. Cooke’s views place her in camp populated by people like Amory Lovins, Helen Caldicott, and Frank von Hippel, as all of them praise her book In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age.

Booklist refers to it as “adopting a skeptical perspective.” That said following on my comments on the New York Times article.

Germany out Czechs in

While Germany is apparently committing energy suicide, the Czech Republic is getting ready to build at least two or three new reactors at Temelin and two more elsewhere. State owned Czech utility CEZ just reshuffled its executive leadership to do this with the objective of selling electricity to Germany. My bet is the Russians will win a good part of the business since they are current sourcing Czech vendors for parts to build two new reactors in Vietnam.

Vietnam’s new build

Vietnam will build up to eight new rectors with vendors from Russia and Japan to produce electricity to create high value aluminum products from the huge bauxite mines in the central highlands and to attract more high tech manufacturing like the $1 billion Intel chip plant that was completed last year.

Japan will re-start all its reactors

Japan is likely to eventually restart most if not all of its current fleet of reactors for two reasons. First, the country needs the electricity to produce high value manufactured products for export to pay for food imports. Japan is less than 50% self-sufficient on food. Second, it can’t afford long-term to compete with China for fossil fuel imports. See also the New York Times Shunning Nuclear Plants at Home, Japan Pursues Building The Overseas

India & China slower pace

The World Nuclear Association estimates for new reactors may indeed be over-optimistic mostly because both India and China will build fewer reactors in the near term than they current claim to have planned for construction. India will run into internal political headwinds. Areva will build two reactors Jaitapur, but may not build another four elsewhere soon. The Russians will likely complete four reactors at Koodankulam, but plans for another 12-18 units may take a while to mature.

China will have problems with producing both the components and the skilled workers and engineers needed to build the plants. While the official estimate for 2030 is put at 80 GWe, time will tell whether they can meet that objective. See also the New York Times for Oct 10 China Marches on with Nuclear Energy, in Spite of Fukushima

Texas nuclear plans are toast

Texas has probably lost all three of its new nuclear projects. In addition to NRG pulling the plug, Exelon stopped its COL and opted for an ESP for Victoria county which could sit on a back burner for up to 20 years. Luminant is drowning in debt and would likely have to sell Comanche Peak to a new investor group to build the two new reactors planned for that site. Good luck convincing someone to put up with money with untried Mitsubishi reactors referenced in the COL.

Italy’s scandal plagued government

First, with regard to Italy, it isn’t clear the Italians were ever in the nuclear renaissance once Claudio Scajulo, the economic minister, got sacked for taking the bribe of a luxury apartment in Rome in return for government construction contracts. The next minister in charge of the program was an 82 year old retired doctor who pointedly said he didn’t want the job.

Then Prime Minister Berlusconi scheduled a referendum vote shortly after the March 11 Fukushima earthquake. The primary purpose was to absolve him of charges related to his personal conduct in office. The nuclear option was bundled in with two other measures. Italian voters rejected all three ballot items in a response largely seen as a protest vote against the prime minister's excesses and not specifically related to nuclear energy.

UK & UAE are bright spots

The UK will likely get at least 10-15 Gwe of new nuclear generating capacity built else the entire country will go broke paying fossil fuel rates.

Lastly, the UAE will break ground for the first of four new South Korean reactors this December (pending regulatory approval)

& & &

So in the end Ms. Cooke’s negative musings about the future of nuclear energy, while mostly true in the broad sweep of things, appear to require significant clarification once a reader adopts a “skeptical attitude.”

View the original article here

Rebalancing the nuclear debate through education

Better physics teaching with a particular emphasis on radioactivity and radiation science could improve public awareness through education of the environmental benefits and relative safety of nuclear power generation, according to leading Brazilian scientist Heldio Villar. He suggests that it might then be possible to have a less emotional debate about the future of the industry that will ultimately reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

To environmental activists, nuclear power and environmental preservation are two antagonistic concepts. Nevertheless, nuclear power can generate huge amounts of electrical and heat energy with minimal impact on the planet, particularly in terms of much lower carbon emissions and pollution than is seen with power generation based on burning fossil fuels. Because of this cultural clash, activists have prognosticated doom for a world if we pursue the nuclear energy option, leading to public distrust of the nuclear industry and its relatives, nuclear research installations and particle accelerators.

"The introduction of the theoretical bases of radioactivity, radiation physics and nuclear power plants in the environmental education curricula will certainly result in a greater awareness of the public towards the reality surrounding radiation and radioactivity," says Villar of the University of Pernambuco, who not surprising also works for Brazil's Nuclear Energy Commission. "This initiative, coupled with a more realistic approach towards nuclear risks on the part of nuclear regulators and licensers, has the potential to make nuclear applications -- not only in electric energy production but in other areas -- more palatable to a public squeamish of another Three Mile Island or Chernobyl and the specter of nuclear weapons, rendering it more prepared to reap the benefits thereof."

Ironically, in the 1950s and 1960s, nuclear power was once hailed as the best option for an energy-starved world. Nuclear reactors were seen as modern, reliable and, above all, capable of producing electricity 'too cheap to meter'. Into the 1970s, the oil crisis sparked the first major interest in going nuclear on a much wider scale. However, even before Three Mile Island, activist groups such as Greenpeace were sounding unwarranted alarm bells and popular movies such as the China Syndrome, which does not have a disastrous ending, were fuelling the anti-nuclear movement.

Villar points out that it is widely accepted that Brazil and several other nations, are entirely capable of launching successful nuclear power programs, given their expertise, the availability of nuclear fuel and the pressures such as a lack of coal and the rising price of oil. "Electrical energy is scarce and obviously expensive," says Villar, "a situation seen in several other countries." Supposed "green" solutions, such as hydroelectric power, which has already been fully exploited in Brazil, as well as gas turbines, solar and wind power, tidal power and biomass, do not represent a cheaper alternative to nuclear he asserts.

View the original article here